


Colorways

by Owlship



Series: Lifelines (Soulmate Fics) [4]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Missing Scene, Trope Bingo Round 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 18:53:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4972459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owlship/pseuds/Owlship
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Capable knows the sky is blue the same way she knows that growing things are green and the sand rolling past is yellow: someone else has told her, someone who had found their soul's match and shrugged off the veil of colorblindness everyone is born with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Colorways

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this kinkmeme prompt](http://madmaxkink.dreamwidth.org/1730.html?thread=1683394#cmt1683394) asking for Nux & Capable being soulmates, because I love every single variation of soulmate fics and will write them until I die, probably. ~~Or until someone else also starts writing them, come on I can't be basically the only one in this fandom~~
> 
> In particular I blame this on two things: George Miller talking about how lovely the black & white version of Fury Road is (it's his favorite cut, apparently), and how disgustingly blue Nick Hoult's eyes are.
> 
> Also fills the "Free Space" on my [Trope_Bingo](http://trope-bingo.dreamwidth.org) [card](http://v8roadworrier.dreamwidth.org/417.html)!

They're going to the Green Place, she repeats like a mantra to the sound of their wheels rolling against sand. They're going to the Green Place, where there are Many Mothers to welcome them, and none of them will have to be anyone's Wife ever again.

It doesn't matter that Capable has never seen the color green before, that everything is the same unending shades of gray, because the actual color of it isn't the important part.

There's a numbness that's settling over her, in the wake of Angharad slipping away from them, of Cheedo trying to return to the arms of the man who'd held them captive, of the knowledge that Joe pursues them still. The man Furiosa's picked up says they need someone down in the Rig's lookout and she jumps on the opportunity, desperate for some space to herself.

Because even as Angharad fell, as Cheedo ran- there was blue, in the sky.

Capable knows the sky is blue the same way she knows that growing things are green and the sand rolling past is yellow: someone else has told her, someone who had found their soul's match and shrugged off the veil of colorblindness everyone is born with. There was something terrifying about the bright-lit gray of the sky as she knows it suddenly flashing with a full clear _blue_ amid all the pain and anger, and she needs to reassure herself that it was just a mistake in her vision.

There's a sunset painting the sky behind the War Rig a riot of contrasting tones, without the faintest hint of blue nor any other color, and before long it'll settle into the inky blackness of night. Capable has always liked that even to those with a soulmate the night sky is devoid of color, and she looks forward to the familiar silvery light of the stars.

An animal noise catches her attention over the mechanical rumbling of the Rig, a scared whimper of pain.

She turns from the sunset to find that it's a War Boy, curled into a niche in the lookout's shell, looking very small and not at all like the ferocious warriors she has heard them be. No more than a boy, really, stripped of all bravado down to the marrow of his failing bones.

She listens to him explain his presence- he's overdue to die, but hoped for one last burst of glory. What glory is there in death, Capable wants to ask, when it's the people left behind that have to carry on? She comforts him instead, the way he must have once wished someone would, before he was turned into battle fodder for an aging warlord.

His skin is soft, where it isn't scarred, and she lets her fingers linger over his still chrome-smudged lips, feeling the shuddery breaths he lets out as a reminder that he's yet living.

Was this the same War Boy who broke into the Rig earlier, tried to kill Furiosa before they'd even reached the canyon? It's hard to say, when there's not much of his face that isn't covered in paint and scars, but she thinks it might be. For a second it almost looks as if there's a blue sky reflected in his searching eyes.

“Red,” he says, tentatively reaching his own hand out, wrapped in the remains of chains. The rest of them have shed their chains; she'll have to see about ridding him of his, too, if he's to stay. “Your hair, it's red.”

“So they tell me,” she replies, and doesn't move away from his fingers when they brush on the barest edges of one of her braids. Those with soulmates like commenting on her hair color- she thinks it must be unusual to see, though it looks no more interesting than anyone else's to her.

“I can see it, I mean,” the boy says, “I've never- it looks like blood. Here, see?” He holds up the rattling chains so she can see a tube wrapped up in it, and she wants to tell him that whatever it is he wants her to see, it'll all look like the same gray to her. “Blood's red and this is blood, and it looks like your hair, so your hair must be red.”

He must have just found his soulmate, if he's still figuring out which colors are which. She'll see nothing but gray but looks at the tubing anyway, to humor him since there's no harm in it. The tube itself is a cloudy clearish material, but what liquid still lingers inside is a dark, wet red.

Capable stares at the color transfixed, hardly daring to believe her vision. There's no doubt that she's seeing the color for real, that her mind isn't just throwing out an illusion, though it seems as if it must be. It's the sort of shade that should have looked almost black but instead glimmers with reflected light and bursts of undeniable color. So this is red, she thinks.

With shaking fingers she pulls her braid out of the boy's grasp so she can bring it round to see it for herself. It's no longer the coarse medium gray she's used to but red, bright and clear, shades different than blood but undeniably the same.

She gasps, and chokes back a sob because she's gained and lost so much already on this desperate escape attempt and she doesn't even know which column this belongs in. You begin to see colors after meeting your soulmate, and she's only met two people today. The feral man that shot Angharad but then drove them out of a fire, and the War Boy she's talking to now, who she's sure must be the same one she threw out of the Rig earlier. The one who's only just begun to see colors of his own.

He looks confused, lost and scared by her reaction, already apologizing for reasons he doesn't know, hands hesitating in the air between them.

Capable shakes her head, closes her eyes against the sight of it all. Because her hair is red, and the sky was blue, and in the morning she'll see all the colors that exist in the Green Place.

His hand lands gentle on the skin of her shoulder and she wonders if there should be a physical reaction, if it should feel like anything more than the same warm comfort she's given and received from her sisters countless times.

“Are you okay? Did I say something wrong?” the War Boy asks, quiet, and she opens her eyes again.

“My hair is red,” she says, and he nods, chews on his scarred lips. “It's red, and your eyes are blue.” The same bright blue of the sky, clear and shining in the last of the dwindling light. The color is unmistakable, having seen it once, and looking into his eyes now she's already starting to forget what it was like to picture the heavens as a gray expanse.

He looks pleased to hear this, before his expression falls. “Of course,” he says quietly, pulling his hand away from her shoulder, cold rushing in to replace its warmth. “I didn't mean any offense. Of course a Wife of the Immortan would have her match.”

Oh, so he hasn't put it together quite yet, that it's _they_ who are bound by fate and biology and all the strange things Miss Giddy's books had tried to teach. Capable clasps his retreating hand to her own, draws it back between them.

“Don't call me his Wife,” she says, more forcefully than she intends, “I'm not even a person to him. He certainly never made me see colors, not in all the time he kept me.”

She softens her tone, “What's your name, War Boy?”

“Nux,” he says, ducking her gaze like he's not sure he deserves to look straight at her. “If- if the Immortan isn't your match,” he says in a very quiet voice, and she smiles faintly for the threads of hope she thinks she can hear. “Who could be? You're so- so _shiny_.”

“The first color I saw was today: the blue sky,” she says instead of answering him directly. “Blue, wide open and bright. If you've been up here the whole time, you must have seen it, too.”

He shakes his head, but his eyes lift to meet hers again. “I wasn't looking at the sky,” Nux says, “I saw red blood, and fire... I saw your hair, when you came up." He jerks his gaze away. "Why haven't you thrown me off like you did before?”

By the sudden change in topic, Capable thinks he'll need more time to let things settle in. Though the light is vanishing swiftly as the sun leaves the horizon, she's already picking out more hues- orange dust, pink skin, brown eyelashes. “Do you still want to kill Furiosa, and take us back?”

He turns his head from her to think it over, face thoughtful and confused. “She didn't steal you, did she?” he asks, hesitant as if he's afraid to even ask, much less hear the answer. “You didn't _want_ to be with him.”

Nux isn't looking, but she shakes her head anyway. “We begged to leave, because Joe thought he could own people- but you _can't_ , it isn't right. We are not things- and you're not a thing, either,” she says. “That's what Angharad would say. You're as much a person as we are, which is why you can think for yourself, why you're here with me. We had to leave.”

There's a lengthy pause, just the dull sound of the Rig moving beneath them. Somewhere far away there's a new scent on the breeze, something damp and earthy, whipped past as they drive through the rolling dunes.

“You won't throw me off, because of what you were yelling before? About the Immortan being a- a-” he can't seem to actually get the blasphemy out, voice stuttering to a halt.

“He's a liar, Nux,” Capable says gently. In some ways this conversation reminds her of talking with Cheedo, at the beginning. She'd seen the worst of Joe but hadn't lived it, yet, and that had made the difference- at least until he'd taken his wrath out on Dag instead. “Joe hurt us: you, and me, and Furiosa, and all the rest. We just want to stop hurting.”

“You shouldn't hurt,” he says, and then nods his head decisively, as if he's made up his mind about something. “I think maybe you're the reason I'm seeing colors,” he confesses, “And maybe that's why, but- I don't want you to hurt.”

She smiles, and squeezes his hand gently before bringing it to her lips, presses a kiss to his long fingers.

“I think you're the reason I'm seeing colors, too,” she says, as if there was any room for doubt on her end now that she's talked with him. This scrappy War Boy would never have been what she expected, had she spent time imagining who her soul's match would be, but here and now it just feels right, to have a connection like this with him.

Nux smiles back, finally loosening some of the nervous tension coiled within his frame. “I don't know what color to call your eyes,” he says, apologetic.

“They're green,” Capable says, because she's been told the answer enough times to know this already. “Green, just like the place we're going.”


End file.
